By its own lofty standards, the Big Ten has had a rather lousy basketball season. It’s hard to have much sympathy for a conference that practically prints money-and there are about 26 conferences that would love to have the problem of having possibly ‘only’ four NCAA bids-but one supposes the league deserved a night like Thursday for its troubles this year.

On the same night, the conference furnished a pair of games that might go down among the more memorable ones of all this season. One was not surprising, as Purdue and Michigan played their second ultra-competitive game this season and the Boilermakers trimmed the Maize and Blue 92-88 in another close one. The other definitely was, as Penn State earned a major road win at the buzzer at Ohio State 82-79. … Continue Reading

The Champions Classic was a great idea when it first came out, an event in the first few days of the season that would lend a good deal of buzz to a sport that tends to lack it at this point. We would get two great matchups at a neutral site with elite programs, and for a while it was part of the 24-hour Tip-Off Marathon.

This year, it was probably a good thing that the doubleheader stood alone. We got two games worthy of the event in every respect.

Continuing a look at our favorite games for every day of the 2017-18 college basketball season. We started yesterday with November, and today we continue with December:

Dec. 1: Pittsburgh at Duquesne. This city matchup will take on a little more urgency this year after the Dukes knocked off Pitt a year ago to end a 15-game losing streak in the series. Honorable mention: Purdue at Maryland in Big Ten games…on Dec. 1?

Dec. 2: Cincinnati at Xavier. On a day with several really appealing. if maybe less unsung matchups (Wichita State/Baylor; Colorado/Colorado State; Vermont/Bucknell; Princeton/Miami [Fla.]; USC/SMU), the headliner is still easily one of the very best rivalries in the sport going on three decades now. Honorable mention: Providence at Rhode Island… Continue Reading

Experience is typically a good thing for a college basketball team. Rarely does it result in the type of leap, though, that North Dakota took in the Big Sky Conference this year.

The Fighting Hawks/formerly Fighting Sioux returned all five starters in 2016-17, though it came on a team that finished one game over .500 (17-16) the year before, tying for fifth in the Big Sky. While Hoopville had UND targeted as a team to watch coming into the season, it was still a lot to ask it to overcome traditional league powers like Weber State and Montana that led the way the year before, as well as stubborn Eastern Washington and Idaho programs regularly near the top of late.

North Dakota showed all the growth one could’ve asked for, though, winning 22 games plus Big Sky regular season and tournament titles. The latter added up to the first-ever Division I NCAA Tournament berth for the former Division II power that only became a full-fledged D-I member five years ago. … Continue Reading

Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. The last few days have been something to behold in college basketball, not unlike the Super Bowl on Sunday.

We start by talking about the four-overtime thriller between Alabama and South Carolina in Columbia on Tuesday night. The Crimson got a great win in a game that saw Sindarius Thornwell score 44 points and grab 21 rebounds, continuing his terrific play since returning from a suspension. Adam Glatczak has more on that in Wednesday’s Morning Dish.

The Big 12 displayed once again on Saturday how its depth from top to bottom the past few years has been peerless. Unfortunately, Saturday also showed how the league might be destined for yet another year of predominantly early exits from the NCAA Tournament.

On a Saturday where top 10 teams and favorites in general were getting knocked down left and right, the Big 12 was the biggest winner when it came to slaying giants. Three of its teams that appeared to be sitting on the NCAA Tournament fence now possessing big-time road wins with Kansas State stinging second-ranked Baylor 56-54, Iowa State winning at No. 3 Kansas 92-89 in overtime and Oklahoma State winning 82-75 at No. 7 West Virginia.… Continue Reading

Thursday night meant one thing among all others in college hoops: Cincinnati vs. Xavier. The Crosstown Shootout. The best non-conference rivalry in college basketball, and (in this opinion) one of the top three rivalries in the sport right now.

A game that always provides plenty of that “buzz” the NCAA men’s basketball committee so badly wants was relegated to ESPN2 (a somewhat minor note, but never let someone tell you perceived issues in this sport aren’t self-inflicted), but it was still every bit the biggest and best game of the night that its history regularly suggests it will be. While ESPN’s decision to show a pretty good matchup on its mothership with North Carolina hosting Virginia Tech was a relative flop (the Tar Heels breezed to a 91-72 win), Cincinnati fought back for an 86-78 win to defeat its bitter city rival for the first time in four meetings and in what was incredibly just the third-ever meeting between the two when both were ranked. … Continue Reading

Super mega ultra conferences can collect members like teenage boys once accumulated baseball cards. They can even brag about having 10, 11, 12 NCAA Tournament contenders.

That will never change this fact: there is no substitute for a double round-robin conference race in college basketball.

The Missouri Valley Conference is annually one of the best conferences to watch in the regular season for that very reason. The Valley’s 18-game schedule is a grind, and winning an undisputed title is a big deal. … Continue Reading

There’s really no other way to put it: Villanova is a machine right now.

The Wildcats just keep on setting them up and knocking them down, navigating a sticky non-conference schedule loaded with traps and doing so in clinical fashion. Villanova’s latest achievement came Tuesday night, when it shut down Obi Enechionyia on the way to defeating Temple 78-57 to clinch the Philadelphia Big 5 title for the fourth straight year.

Enechionyia has been one of the hottest shooters anywhere much of the early season for the Owls, entering this game averaging 18.6 points and hitting nearly 50% from three-point range. Against Villanova, he had nearly as many turnovers (six) as points (eight) and never got to the free-throw line, either, essentially rendered a non-factor.… Continue Reading

The Big Sky puts out a good basketball product, at least from a competitive standpoint. Of all the mid-majors, this one might be hidden the most in terms of having so much working against it. The footprint is in the two western-most time zones and largely overshadowed not only by the Pac-12, but also the Mountain West and West Coast Conference. It has produced a few splashes over the years and little more, but within its own little world is a good product.

As tends to happen, some familiar faces were among those at the top. Weber State and Montana continue to be mainstays, as they are the two programs with the all-time best records both overall and in conference play among current members. In fact, they are the only current members whose Big Sky records are over .500 all-time. Save for 2014-15, when Weber State finished a surprising sixth, both teams have finished in the top three in the conference every year since 2008-09. The two have also combined for 19 conference titles, with no one else having more than four.

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College Basketball Tonight

We hope you enjoyed COLLEGE BASKETBALL TONIGHT during the 2016 NCAA Tournament. COLLEGE BASKETBALL TONIGHT is a comprehensive look at the NCAA Tournament hosted by veteran college basketball broadcaster Ted Sarandis, along with co-hosts Mike Jarvis and Terry O'Connor, both former Division I coaches. It also included many great guests, including Hoopville's own Phil Kasiecki.

The show aired on AM 710 WOR in New York City on Sunday evenings starting with Selection Sunday and running through the NCAA Tournament.

In our latest podcast, we talk about a lot of what has happened in the ACC and SEC, including the Big 12/SEC Challenge, whether or not Kentucky is turning a corner, as well as the story at Michigan State.

In our latest podcast, we talk about big road wins for a few teams, including a couple of bluebloods that looked destined for losses, as well as an unsettled Big Ten beyond one team, an SEC where you shouldn’t pay attention to bracketologists, and the problems with a proposed earlier start to the college basketball season.

In our latest podcast, we talk about several big pieces of news away from game play, one of which puts a lot in perspective. We also talk about the lack of dominant teams and how this has shown up in the results, especially this past weekend.

Some news and notes coming from the second and final day of action at the 2017 Boston Shootout, where the host program provided plenty of talent, but so did a program that produced a team that beat them.